1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an application collaboration system that realizes a portal screen to provide an environment to use a business system, and particularly to an application collaboration system, an application collaboration method and an application collaboration program that control a collaboration of even an application on a client.
2. Description of the Related Art
As a system allowing a user to easily operate a plurality of application systems and Web sites being operational on the World Wide Web (hereinafter, the Web), a Web application referred to as a Web portal site (hereinafter, a Web portal) has been provided.
A related Web portal, in order a user can easily see a large number of applications and information contained in them, displays images of the plurality of applications together in a single screen. Generally, a screen element corresponding to each application constituting a screen layout of a Web portal is referred to as a portlet. A screen layout of a Web portal is formed in various combinations of a plurality of arranged portlets. A system is also disclosed that not only displays a plurality of portlets, but also can select an application to be displayed or change displayed content, depending on a role and status of a user. For example, Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2006-107012 discloses an approach to decision of screen configuration using user definition information. Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2005-327150 discloses an approach to configuration of a screen layout according to the ability of a terminal used by a user.
Meanwhile, as a more developed form of the Web portal, some inventions are disclosed that aim to more actively assist a user to operate a plurality of applications and provide a comfortable environment to use the applications by not only making content of the applications easy-to-view for a user, but also by partly automating the operation of the applications or making the plurality of originally independent applications collaborate with one another. For example, Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2002-351827 discloses a means that saves details of user personal information in a Web portal when the information is registered in an application, and that automatically inputs the saved content when similar information is registered in other applications. Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2004-38759 discloses a means that realizes collaboration among the portlets such as synchronizing portlets with one another or transferring data.
Also, a means that allows a Web portal to be collaborated with a system other than a Web application is disclosed. For example, WO2004-114142 discloses an approach to collaboration between a Web portal and an e-mail client in a client terminal.
However, the approaches or means described in the above have the following problems.
A first problem is that a Web portal and an application on a client terminal (hereinafter, referred to as a client application) cannot be made to appropriately collaborate with each other according to an environment on the client used by a user. Because all Web applications provided on the Web portal are installed in the Web portal or other servers and the client can use any application as long as it has a Web browser, the Web portal can decide and execute screen configuration and collaboration among portlets without considering the client environment. However, the Web portal according to the related arts has no way to know what applications are installed in each client, even though available client applications depend on which client is used because each set of client applications is installed in each client terminal. Therefore, the Web portal cannot decide appropriate screen configuration or a collaboration method between the applications depending on the available client application types.
A second problem is that the client applications cannot be collaborated with the Web portal in various forms. WO2004-114142 discloses automation of processes to activate and login to the client applications. However, the scheme described in WO2004-114142 can only realize display of related applications on a screen, as is disclosed in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2006-107012 or Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2005-327150. For example, assistance of user tasks in various collaboration, such as changing a screen layout in cooperation with a Web portal in a client application after the activation of it, or retrieving data displayed in a screen layout of a client application and passing the data to a portlet on a Web portal, is impossible. This is because a general client application is only assumed to be used by a user via a graphical user interface (hereinafter, referred to as a GUI), hence, although the client application can be activated, it is impossible to transit to a different screen layout by operating a button on the screen or retrieve a character string displayed on the screen via other programs. Some client applications prepare a dedicated interface to be used by the other programs separately from a GUI, but not all client applications have such a function.
A third problem is that it is complicated to handle a large number of client applications. Many client applications have similar objects or functions as client applications like a scheduler, an e-mail client or a messenger, for example, and in many cases a user selects his/her preferring client application and installs it in his/her client for use. However, client applications differ from one another in most of particular functions or operations even if they are similar in their objects or functions. Further, some client applications differ from one another in their functions or operations due to different versions even if they have the same name. When a system operate client applications, it must have rules considering all of such particular differences for each of the client applications. A large amount of labor will be required to create such collaboration rules among applications.